Tucker Article from the Eugene, Register Guard Aug. 12 1988

[NO. 46]

I am looking for a newspaper article titled "Tucker's dream becomes a treasure" from the Eugene, OR Register Guard from August 12th 1988. It has a picture of Tucker #1046 and the 2nd ower John Janecek. The article is on two pages. I contacted the newspaper and they can only print me the picture and not the article. Does anyone have this newspaper or know what the article says? Would it be found in the Eugene, OR library?

[TuckerCar]

I've had good luck getting Tucker items from local libraries. I was looking for a dealer ad from the Gloucester City News (NJ). I emailed them and the next thing I knew copies were in the mail.

If no one here has it, definitely try the library there.

[ehartman13]

I though I saw that article framed on Dave Cammack's wall when we were there for the convention. Anyone else remember seeing this? Might be a place to start to find out what is says, I read it and it was an interesting piece.

[NO. 46]

I wrote an email to the library. Hopefully they will get back to me. It is interesting that Dave might of had the article at his place.

[TuckerCar]

I though I saw that article framed on Dave Cammack's wall when we were there for the convention. Anyone else remember seeing this? Might be a place to start to find out what is says, I read it and it was an interesting piece.

I remember that too. It was on the wall just next to the doorway to the room with the cars. I didn't read it, but was that about Janecek or Jenin? I don't remember. I think I was still feeling the effects of the Old Country Buffet at that point!

[NO. 46]

I found the article! Dennis Helle used to live in Springfield, OR and took his vehicles to Janecek Motors for maintenance for many years. In 2002 he told us that he saved the article from 1988 on the car. I contacted him again recently and received a color photocopy of the entire article today. I am also going to get a high resolution photo printed from the newspaper. It is an interesting article that I will be sharing with the club. Janecek says that he took out the original Tucker drivetrain. This contradicts the infomation that I heard about it originally having an Oldsmobile drivetrain. I will try and contact Johns wife for more information.

[TuckerCar]

:D

I found the article! Dennis Helle used to live in Springfield, OR and took his vehicles to Janecek Motors for maintenance for many years. In 2002 he told us that he saved the article from 1988 on the car. I contacted him again recently and received a color photocopy of the entire article today. I am also going to get a high resolution photo printed from the newspaper. It is an interesting article that I will be sharing with the club. Janecek says that he took out the original Tucker drivetrain. This contradicts the infomation that I heard about it originally having an Oldsmobile drivetrain. I will try and contact Johns wife for more information.

Will-

Jenin took out the Tucker and put in the Olds. Janecek took out the Olds and put in the Mercury. I am certain of that.

[NO. 46]

This is the article that I found copied word for word:

"You can't have it for $100,000" above photo
(photo of Tucker #1046 with John Janecek siting in front of it)
Caption under photo reads: John Janecek paid $4,500 in 1963 for his Tucker. He's been offered as much as $100,000 for the car with three headlights. 'This one's not for sale,' he says.

Tucker's dream becomes a treasure
By Mike Thoele
The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD -- John Janecek doesn't have to tell people what it is anymore.

Not now. Now that three-eyed, head-turning $100,000 wonders such as the one he drives are showing up every-where, from the pages of Time magazine to the neighbor-hood movie theater, few people ask Janecek if his Tucker car is a Studebaker.

Preston Tucker, the financier and promoter who produced 51 cars in 1948 was -- take your choice -- a genious or a con man. His postwar challenge to Detroit's Big Three died after a government investigation and a trial that left him acquitted but financially ruined.

It's all there in Francis Ford Coppola's latest film, "Tucker: The Man and His Dream." The movie is premiering in major cities around the country this week and opens in Eugene tonight.

The pre-release publicity for the film has brought new attention to the story of the controversial Tucker and the futuristic car that never made it into full production.

Janecek, 58, a longtime Springfield garage owner, bought his Tucker 25 years ago, when the car was a curiosity rather than a treasure.

"We paid $4,500 for it in 1963," said Carolyn Janecek, who shares her husband's passion for collectible automobiles. "We bought it from a guy in Florida who had 11 of them and only wanted $38,000 for the whole bunch. But even $4,500 was a lot of money for us then."

The Janeceks, who drive the Tucker several thousand miles each year, returned to Springfield on Thursday. Hired by Paramount Pictures, they displayed the car at theaters and promotional events in Portland and Seattle.

Earlier, Janecek passed up the chance to give his car a role in the movie.

"They were only paying $2,500 and I didn't want it damaged," he said. "I was worried about that. When you see the movie, you'll understand why. They were pretty hard on them. They lost the transmission out of one and broke axles on two or three of them."

While the film makers where hard on the automobiles, they were kind to Tucker, at lease from Janecek's perspective.

Janecek has been a Tucker believer since his boyhood. He is amung the legions of U.S. auto buffs who subscribe to the view that Tucker was a creative innovator who was hammered into ruin because he was a threat to the auto industry giants of the 1940s -- Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. The movie follows that theme.

But others have pointed to Tucker's involvement in earlier questinable schemes as evidence that he was, at worst, a fraud and, at best, a poor businessman whose attention to detail never matched his big ideas. Tucker was involved in various automotive sales and manufacturing enterprises in the 1930s. In World War II, he was part of the war production effort and was credited with the invention of a special turret for armored vehicles.

After the war, from 1946 to 1950, came his abortive attempt to bring a new vehicle onto the American market. Domestic auto production had been suspended in 1942. In the consumer buying frenzy that followed the war, American manufacturers had hit the marketplace with boring cars that looked like the prewar models.

"They were going to have their really new cars out in 1949, but Tucker was a year ahead of them," Janecek said. "He was ready to go in 1948."

The cars that Tucker produced -- 46 of them survive -- actually were prototypes, built to help attract investment capital for his venture. They did not have the air-cooled engines that he envisioned for the production models. But they did sport a long list of innovations that would not show up on American production cars for years, including disk brakes, seat belts and windshields designed to pop out in a crash.

The trademark feature was a third center-mounted headlight coupled to the steering system so that it turned, left and right, with the front wheels.

Automotive historians say the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the courts, the competitors and Tucker's own business shortcomings killed the dream. Janecek, whose lifelong love affair with automobiles began when he was young, was a Springfield high school student then.

"I remember listening to Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell talking about this guy on the radio." he said. "I had an after-school job at the Ford garage in Springfield. Sometimes, I had to drive to Portland to bring back cars. Tucker flew a car into Portland, a big black one, and I went to see it. I wanted one from that day on."

The garage business that Janecek launched in Springfield a few years later gradually permitted him and his wife to indulge their interest in special cars. They buy, sell and trade, and typically own about a dozen unusual vehicles. Carolyn Janecek found their Tucker and negotiated by mail with the owner for more than a year before they purchased the vehicle.

A year of work by John Janecek and two of his employees followed. The car was disassembled and rebuilt from the ground up. Janecek didn't approach the project as a purist. Because the engine wasn't the one that Tucker envisioned in the production model, Janecek felt no pangs of conscience about replacing it with a late-model Mercury V-8. And, like most other current owners, he rebuilt and modified the prototype suspension.

The engine conversion has added to the enjoyment of the car.

"I can drive mine," Janecek said. "And we drive it everywhere. Other people haul theirs around, and they have to worry about parts."

The movie is expected to push the price of Tuckers upward. But it's all academic to Janecek.

"I don't think I'll ever get rid of it," he said. "A few years back, I had a guy stand in my office and lay $100,000 in cash on my desk. He'd been looking everywhere for a Tucker, and he wanted mine. I told him where he could find one for $65,000.

"This one's not for sale."

[TuckerCar]

Because the engine wasn't the one that Tucker envisioned in the production model, Janecek felt no pangs of conscience about replacing it with a late-model Mercury V-8. And, like most other current owners, he rebuilt and modified the prototype suspension.

The engine conversion has added to the enjoyment of the car.

Pretty ambiguous. Wonder if that was on purpose by Janecek or just how the author wrote it. I also didn't realize he pretty much put it on a brand new car chassis. I always assumed the Merc chassis was old when he did it.

[plancor 792]

I can tell you that Tucker 1046 did have an Oldsmobile engine in it when purchased by the Janecek's.
Russ Brownell and myself were hired by Lucas Film to maintain the Tucker's brought to Richmond, CA for the making of the movie and contrary to the newspaper report, no axles were broken, however I broke a universal joint in Tucker 1015 which we replaced. Upon examination we saw that this universal joint had an old crack and was ready to fully break at any time. Some of the cars did experience shifting problems that we worked on. However with the Cord transmission and the Y-1 transmission you never can say they all will shift every time you change gears.

Richard

[plancor 792]

Rereading the newspaper article the statement " lost the transmission in one" is not so. No transmissions were lost, however we did have a couple of cars that were not shifting gears as smoothly as they should have. This was caused by poor electrical connections and lack of engine vacuum to the shift solenoids. Some we were able to correct and some continued to have problems. I kept a complete work report of what work we did on each car there.

Richard

[NO. 46]

Thanks for the replies. I am trying to collect as much information as I can to document the history of #1046. I would like to find more information from articles etc. about when it had an Oldsmobile engine. Did it still have the Tucker suspension before Janecek? Are there any pictures of this car when it had the Oldsmobile engine? What year was it painted gold from maroon? All this is important as it helps me to tell a complete and accurate history of this car.